I always enjoy US campaign season. There’s a vibrancy and commitment to the whole thing that makes a refreshing change from the Westminister Village’s incestuous posturefests.
Still, not everyone likes American style. Tory A-Lister Iain Dale is just appalled – appalled I tell you – by Vernon Roberts’s ad. Not that he actually gets round to telling us why. Like we can’t guess. See, that’s strike one there. Does Iain Dale really think the rest of us are too stoopid to guess what’s really motivating him ?
Then there’s the humbuggery of it all. Iain Dale and the rest of the Pink Wedge spent years yammering about ‘tolerance’, but now they’ve got the whip hand, anyone who doesn’t like Kylie gets the extra-special snark with added snark.
But let’s not let the superficial humbuggery of ID’s position blind us to the deeper humbug. The Pink Wedge claims gays need to be represented by gays but how does that work ? In a PR-based system you could indeed have ‘gay MPs’, ‘black MPs’ or even ‘RPG geek MPs’, but in a constituency-based system the rest of the voters in any given place are quite within their rights to say ‘well, who’s representing us then’ ?
This is not a problem if we’re just talking about an MP who nails blokes as a hobby, as it were, but here’s Iain Dale taking against Vernon Roberts precisely because of his views on you-know-what. His sexuality isn’t a side-issue, it’s the driver of his views here. What confidence can, say, social conservatives or the religious have in the prospect of being represented by Dale ?
Still, not everyone likes American style. Tory A-Lister Iain Dale is just appalled – appalled I tell you – by Vernon Roberts’s ad. Not that he actually gets round to telling us why. Like we can’t guess. See, that’s strike one there. Does Iain Dale really think the rest of us are too stoopid to guess what’s really motivating him ?
Then there’s the humbuggery of it all. Iain Dale and the rest of the Pink Wedge spent years yammering about ‘tolerance’, but now they’ve got the whip hand, anyone who doesn’t like Kylie gets the extra-special snark with added snark.
But let’s not let the superficial humbuggery of ID’s position blind us to the deeper humbug. The Pink Wedge claims gays need to be represented by gays but how does that work ? In a PR-based system you could indeed have ‘gay MPs’, ‘black MPs’ or even ‘RPG geek MPs’, but in a constituency-based system the rest of the voters in any given place are quite within their rights to say ‘well, who’s representing us then’ ?
This is not a problem if we’re just talking about an MP who nails blokes as a hobby, as it were, but here’s Iain Dale taking against Vernon Roberts precisely because of his views on you-know-what. His sexuality isn’t a side-issue, it’s the driver of his views here. What confidence can, say, social conservatives or the religious have in the prospect of being represented by Dale ?
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